


It's raining, It's pouring

by bellfort3



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Sleepy Bois Inc, Video Blogging RPF, mcyt, sbi - Fandom
Genre: All Platonic - Freeform, Angst, Anxiety, Crying, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, IRL Fic, No shipping, Other, Protective TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Protective Wilbur Soot, Sad TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Sad Wilbur Soot, Tommy misses Wilbur, Tommy needs a hug, mcyt - Freeform, platonic, sbi, they are brothers your honor, they are family, tommy and wilbur - Freeform, tommy is overwhelmed, tommy wants to play minecraft, wilbur and tommy, wilbur is struggling with his mental health, wilbur needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-20 18:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30009003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellfort3/pseuds/bellfort3
Summary: The first times that Wilbur and Tommy cried in front of one another.
Relationships: Family dynamics - Relationship, No Romantic Relationship(s), No shipping - Relationship, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, platonic - Relationship, they are brothers - Relationship
Comments: 22
Kudos: 278





	It's raining, It's pouring

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a song fic but I stole the title from 'It's Raining, It's Pouring,' by Anson Seabra

Wilbur didn’t plan on crying when he accepted Tommy’s call. Yeah, he was tired and anxious and drowning in these feelings of hopelessness and panic that seemed to stem from nowhere but come from everywhere, but he didn’t feel like crying. In fact, he felt like doing nothing at all. Maybe that’s why it took Tommy several attempts to get Wilbur to answer his call. 

Wilbur picked up on the fifth call. “Wilbur!” Tommy greeted as soon as the call had connected. “Finally, I’ve been trying to reach you for ages! Where have you been, mate? I want to play Minecraft.”

Wilbur grimaced. He hated to turn Tommy down but he also hated the thought of putting on a facade around the boy even more. “Sorry, I don’t feel like getting on right now,” he said truthfully. “Maybe another time.”

Wilbur could practically hear Tommy deflate. “You said that yesterday...and the day before,” he mumbled. “Wilbur, is everything alright?”

And that was all it took. One 16-year-old to express the slightest bit of concern for him was all it took to get Wilbur to break. 

The brunette shattered like a sharp pin to the glass of a car window. Still, then gone all at once. Wilbur glanced down at the sparkling shards that littered the floor around his desk chair, pulling in a shuddering breath and finding horror in the way his throat suddenly constricted and made it hard to breathe. He felt weirdly disconnected all of a sudden, as if he were watching himself fall apart through the eyes of another. 

Wilbur desperately blinked away the pressure building behind his eyes. What happened to him not feeling like crying? He almost preferred the empty and numb feeling he had felt before compared to this onslaught of sudden emotion. It scared him, being forced out of his dissociative state by a child who just called to play Minecraft with him. He needed an outlet for this fear, for this  _ confusion _ , but when he opened his mouth to say something all that came out was a pathetic whimper. 

“...Wilbur?”

Wilbur slapped a hand over his betraying mouth just as Tommy’s camera clicked on, revealing the worried look on his face as he leaned into the camera. 

“Wilbur,” the teen speaks tentatively, scrounging the screen as if he could will Wilbur into turning his camera on. But Wilbur’s whimper had been quick to dissolve into something more. Silent tears rolled down his splotchy cheeks and he was tempted to turn his mic off alongside his camera. “What’s wrong?”   
  


Wilbur shook his head dejectedly. He breathed raggedly through the spaces in between his fingers. He had to pull himself together, he had no choice  _ but _ to pull himself together. He was crying in front of Tommy-he couldn’t be crying in front of Tommy! Tommy looked up to him too much to see him  _ break _ like this. 

_ But hadn’t Tommy been the one to open the floodgates in the first place?  _

Wilbur hiccuped lightly through a choked sob as he wiped the tears away from his eyes. God, he was properly crying now, wasn’t he? Fat tears streaming down his face in rivulets, chest stuttering with each haggard breath, he hadn’t cried like this in years! It was both exhausting and relieving. After countless nights curled up in a ball in his bed, hand fisted in his mouth to muffle the sobs that threatened to rip themselves from his throat, telling himself over and over and over again to  _ pull it together,  _ finally letting it out, if only slightly, felt like a weight was being lifted off of his shoulders. 

“Wilbur-Wil, are you there?”

Tommy’s concerned voice startles Wilbur out of his stupor. The brunette flinches slightly before responding. “Y-yeah,” he says and  _ god _ , does he sound wrecked. He cringed at the sound of his own voice, shying away from his microphone. 

Tommy’s face pinches. He’s staring at the blue and purple image of Wilbur’s Discord icon with a mixture of both worry and pity. He looked unnatural with a look like that on a face so young. 

“Wilbur.”

“Hm?”

“Let me look at you.”

_ No, _ Wilbur thinks immediately. The tears were falling too quickly now, his breaths coming too rapidly. The dam had been broken and there was no patching it back up until the entirety of the river was gone. He had to wait this out now, he had to completely shatter before he could even think about putting the pieces back together. 

“Wilby-”

A pause. 

“ _ -please. _ ”

Wilbur glanced down and away, grimacing to himself. That  _ damn _ nickname. He loved hearing most of the time, especially if it came from Tommy. With the name usually came this warm and fuzzy feeling inside, making him kneel over and bury his reddening face in his hands as an impossibly large smile took over his face. Now though, the only thing he felt was cold. Ice cold, as if the tears on his face had frozen over, the blood surging in his veins freezing to a sudden and dizzying stop. The man gasped dramatically, the air being pushed from his spasming lungs as if he’d just endured a quick punch to the gut. 

The nickname was definitely enough to knock him down a peg. It gave Wilbur pause, the man internally debating with himself. On the one hand, he was literally having a mental breakdown. After weeks of holding himself together and days of keeping Tommy at bay, was it all going to be for nothing? Was it all going to come crashing down because Tommy had called him ‘Wilby?’

Numbly, as if he weren’t in control of his body, Wilbur lifted a heavy hand and found his sparse computer mouse. He navigated the cursor slowly, moving the small white arrow across the screen until it hovered over his camera icon. He couldn’t look as his index finger pressed down on the right clicker. 

There was a beat of terse silence. Wilbur made a point to avoid eye contact, keeping his gaze trained on his keyboard as his camera loaded. He could feel Tommy’s eyes on him the next moment, could feel them taking in his glassy and bloodshot eyes, his sticky cheeks streaked with fresh tear tracks, his hair all mused and messy. He looked a wreck and he knew that Tommy just needed a second to process it-he had never seen Wilbur like this before! Wilbur had made sure to keep this part of him hidden from Tommy over the past year. Whenever he felt bad he usually kept to himself and stayed offline. It just so happened that Tommy didn’t like it when Wilbur was offline. 

“Wilbur…”

Wilbur dipped even lower in his chair at the detectable amount of pity found in just that one word. He tried to blink away the burning sensation that threatened to spill more tears, not trusting himself to speak.

Tommy sighed and suddenly the sound of a mouse clicking and keys typing filled Wilbur’s ears. He glanced up quickly in time to see Tommy share his screen. He had Minecraft displayed for the both of them to see. 

“I know you don’t want to talk right now and I won’t make you,” Tommy’s voice was soft, gentle. “So, maybe we can just sit and watch me play Minecraft for a bit?”

Tommy didn’t wait for an audible reply as he created a new world and started to speedrun survival, but he let himself smile when he noticed Wilbur tilt his head towards the screen, eyes twinkling with something besides tears and that was a win in his book. 

\-----

Tommy hated crying. It made him feel small and weak and  _ vulnerable. _ He especially hated crying in front of other people. It allowed them to see a whole different side of him. It was like showing people what was under his bed or what’s in his closet, like  _ here, you know me but now you know what’s  _ inside _ of me. _

In retrospect, Tommy should’ve been smarter about this. Whenever the teen got mildly upset, his body had either three responses: 1. get angry 2. get sad 3. get angry and then get sad. And while he was able to recognize the way his throat seemed to tighten on the rest of the walk home, it didn’t realize he was going to be dealing with #3 until halfway through his conversation with Wilbur. 

The conversation started with Tommy ringing the older man as soon as he’d closed his bedroom door behind him and dropped his backpack onto the floor. It wasn’t that he’d had a bad day-nothing bad had happened! It was just that, well, he’d gotten recognized for the first time on his way home from school. 

It had been everything that Tommy had been expecting from his first time getting recognized in public. It had been awkward and tense and tad bit uncomfortable for both parties, but nothing too scary or upsetting. It was what he continued to think about the rest of the walk home that caused him to spiral. 

Wilbur furrowed his brows. “Wait, I’m confused,” he said, holding up a hand to the camera. “Isn’t this...isn’t this a good thing? Why do you sound so upset?”

Tommy whined dramatically, burying his face in his hands. “I’m not _ upset _ ,” he mumbled and sure maybe Wilbur couldn’t tell, but Tommy’s throat was constricted and his sternum felt hot and there was this pressure behind his eyes that was almost painful. “I just-this isn’t  _ normal _ , Wilbur.”

Wilbur chuckled but it was uneasy. “What do you mean?”

Tommy blew the air out his lungs in a frustrated burst. “Like, it’s not normal for random strangers to come up to me on the street! It’s not normal for people to ask for a picture with me! Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s wicked cool and I’m very lucky to have made it to this point, but…” Tommy cut himself off, tearing his burning eyes away from the screen and staring down at his hands. They were shaking and he quickly clenched them into fists to suppress it. 

“But…?’ Wilbur spoke gently, encouraging Tommy to continue. 

Tommy grimaced, tempted to cut himself off permanently. It wasn’t too late to swallow the rest of his thoughts and feelings and change the subject, he just wasn’t sure that Wilbur would let him. Something about bottling up feelings and shit was bad for you. 

“But…” the blond started up again, albeit a bit hesitant. “But it's not normal. Like, I won’t be normal ever again. I will always...I’m not a normal kid anymore, Wilbur.”

And god, it was true, wasn’t it? Now that he’d said it outloud, Tommy realized just how true it was. Sure, he’d achieved his dream of making it on YouTube, but all at the expense of the rest of his childhood. No longer would he be able to walk to school without constantly checking his back. No longer would he be able to grab a bite to eat with his friends without feeling like they were being watched. No longer could he just  _ be _ in public. 

“No shit,” Wilbur pulls Tommy out of his spiraling thoughts with a forced chuckle. “No normal kid has 6 million subscribes and averages 200k viewers per stream, Tommy.”

Tommy tried to hide how much he visibly deflated when Wilbur said that. “So, there's no way that I can have both?”

“Have both what?”

“A childhood and success.”

Wilbur did a double take. “Pardon?”

Tommy leaned back in his gaming chair, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “No more walks out on the town. No more harmless pranks with my friends. No more parties. I can’t do anything anymore without someone watching me.”

Something cold seeped beneath the top layer of Wilbur’s skin, branching out in his veins and making him shiver. Tommy was curling up in his chair now, knees pulled up to his chest and head ducked into his lap, hands still hiding his face. “No, Tommy, no,” Wilbur murmured, voice soft. “You’re still a kid, you don’t have to give that up just yet, or ever if you don’t want to. Hell, I’m almost 25 and I don’t think I’ve grown up yet.”

Tommy shook his head minutely. He looked up at the camera and Wilbur was startled by the steadiness in his voice even though the water in his eyes was clearly visible. “That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Tommy-”

“No!” Wilbur flinched at Tommy’s sudden outburst. In a matter of seconds, all signs of sadness and remorse were wiped clean off of the teen’s face, now replaced with something akin to rage. “No! Don’t patronize me like that! Stop pitying me! Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m right, Wilbur, because I know I am. Don’t fucking sugarcoat it.”

Wilbur blinked, scrambling to recover from the panic Tommy’s anger had caused him. The boy had back off once again, resuming somewhat of a fetal position in his chair and aggressively wiping at his eyes, leaving Wilbur to wonder  _ where the fuck did that come from? _

A beat of tense silence passed between them, the air only filled with the harshness of Wilbur’s breathing and the occasional sniffle from Tommy. It was mildly concerning how well the kid was holding himself together through all of this. 

“Tommy,” Wilbur said after a moment. Tommy didn’t spare him a glance as he continued to talk. “I don’t pity you. I wasn’t-I didn’t say any of that out of pity.”

That earned a huff from the blond. “I..I know,” he sighed regretfully. “I know. I’m sorry, I know. I just-I don’t want to sound like a wanker-I know how lucky I am.”

Wilbur reeled backwards. “What? No, Tommy, your feelings are valid. You’re not obligated to like every aspect of being famous. Just because you miss some of those aspects of a normal life doesn’t mean you’re a wanker.”

“I don’t know…” Tommy was back to hiding his face behind his knees. “I sound like a wanker.”

Wilbur pushed down the profound feeling of protectiveness that surged through him at the broken sound of Tommy’s voice. “No,” he said it with such a fierceness that surprised even himself. “You sound like a kid who wants to be able to  _ be _ a kid.”

Tommy didn’t have anything to say to that. 

Wilbur hated the silence on a normal day, but he especially hated the silence that came from TommyInnit. “I’m sorry,” he said stupidly, numbly, but he meant it all the same. He was sorry for Tommy, for the cards that he had been dealt at the age he was, for the stage of the world that he had been born into, for the needs and wants he craved that could no longer be attained. Wilbur was sorry that he could do nothing to help him. 

Tommy lifted his head ever so slightly, turning it to the side and resting his cheek on his kneecap. He reached down and started fiddling with the tied shoelace on his shoe. He was still in his school uniform. 

“I am too, sometimes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry
> 
> Tumblr: bellfort3


End file.
